Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, for that brilliant explanation of the judgments of the European Court of Justice and related matters. I find it intimidating to continue now with some rather tedious political points after his brilliant exposition.

I will not detain your Lordships very long this evening. I simply want to record my strong support for this essential Bill and to urge your Lordships to give it a speedy passage on to the statute book. However, before I say anything more, I declare an interest as a strategic adviser to the head of public sector business of Telefónica UK. As an international company, it provides communications services to customers in the UK and therefore will be directly affected by the Bill when it becomes the law of the land. I have never discussed any aspect of the proposed legislation with anyone at Telefónica, and my connection with the company is declared in the register of members’ interests. Nevertheless, I thought it wise to mention that to avoid any possible misunderstandings at a later date.

On 16 June, at Second Reading of the Serious Crime Bill, which your Lordships have been considering in Committee, I said that although I welcomed that Bill, I was disappointed that it did not deal with the situation caused by the 8 April decision of the European Court of Justice, which struck down the European Union’s data retention directive, thus raising serious legal concerns about our own national mandatory communications data retention framework. I am pleased that those concerns have been confirmed by the report of the Constitution Committee published today. I went on to say that the court’s decision had very damaging consequences—perhaps I should have said potentially catastrophic consequences—for our fight against terrorism and serious and organised crime.

As was pointed out by the Minister and many other noble Lords who have spoken, communications data of the kind affected by the court’s decision are critical to the success of almost all investigations of serious and organised crime, including rape, child sexual exploitation and murder. Of course, they are also critical to the prevention of terrorist activity at home and abroad. That material is also vital to securing convictions and, as one or two noble Lords have mentioned, to protecting the vulnerable who are at risk of serious harm. That is why we cannot afford for there to be doubts surrounding the legality of our communications retention and investigatory arrangements. In the speech of a month ago which I referred to, I also urged the Government, in putting things right by removing those doubts, to “act boldly and courageously” so that our law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies were able to use the full range of available technological systems and equipment to assist them in their mission of keeping us safe.

In saying that, I had in mind the communications data Bill, which, sadly, we will not consider in this Parliament. I very much hope that we as a nation will not have cause to regret the decision of the coalition Government not to proceed with that Bill at this time. I say that not only because I believe that a Bill of that kind is essential if our policing, security and intelligence services are to have even half a chance of keeping up with the ever-expanding capabilities of the information processing and communications industries. I say it also because that draft Bill was described in this House last Thursday by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, and again today, as,

“a good Bill which balanced the essential needs of civil liberty and privacy against the Government’s first duty to protect the security and safety of the citizen”.—[Official Report, 10/7/14; col. 288.]

That Bill has been ready for introduction for some time now, and has been sidelined for purely party-political reasons, despite a large amount of work having already been done on it by both the Government and the Joint Select Committee under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Blencathra. How sad that we should play politics with an issue that is so central to our national security and to the safety of our communities.

Be that as it may, I must admit that it would be difficult to characterise the provisions of this Bill as either bold or courageous. We have heard on a number of occasions from my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and from the Minister that this is a narrow and limited Bill, which does nothing more than maintain the status quo and ensure that police investigations do not suddenly go dark and criminals escape justice. I am sorry about that—it all sounds a bit too cautious for me. However, perhaps it is just as well that the Bill is not more courageous and bold. As we all know, courageous and bold Bills have a tendency to excite a good deal of political controversy, and therefore take up a good deal of parliamentary time. In the present instance, time is something we do not have very much of.

It is essential that we get these provisions on the statute book as quickly as possible. I see no justification for wasting precious parliamentary hours and days arguing about whether the Government should have brought the Bill forward more quickly, made it shorter or more comprehensive, or anything else. There will be plenty of time to argue about the Government’s management of the Bill and about their general approach to public safety and fighting crime in the run-up to the general election, which is about to begin, if indeed it has not already done so. The fact is that the Bill does the job that needs doing now. It does it efficiently and effectively. Those who want to have these issues discussed at much greater length can take heart from the fact that the Bill contains a sunset clause, which ensures that it will be repealed on 31 December 2016 unless Parliament acts to continue it, with or without amendment. That is why I endorse the Bill without reservation and urge other noble Lords to do the same.